Are you surprised? I'm not.
The Angry Birds Movie made a nice profit, a good $346 million against a relatively small $73 million budget. 4.7x the cost! Of course a sequel's coming, regardless of whether the game is still popular with the kiddies or not. Rovio's CEO Kati Levoranta announced the sequel the other day, much to a lot of people's horror.
But is this anything new? In a world where Minions made $1 billion, Shaun the Sheep Movie struggled to find an audience, great smaller-scale films normally settle for tiny theatrical releases, and so much more, this isn't surprising. If Angry Birds were some $175 million-costing endeavor like The Good Dinosaur, the narrative would be different. But it isn't, it's a lower-budget production made mostly in Finland, and it happens to be based on a multi-million franchise and it also happens to be a not-so-well-received film. (What I saw of it was just alright, fun third act when the birds actually and finally do what they do in the games, everything else before that was blah.)
I know, I know, it's frustrating. We all want Kubo and the Two Strings to be that $350 million-grossing smash at the worldwide box office, and we want similar things to happen to high quality/ambitious films. Well, even if they are mainstream, we saw Zootopia crack a billion, we saw Kung Fu Panda 3 do fine, and we're currently seeing Finding Dory zero in on the billion. Yes it's not enough, but still, not all is dire in animationland.
My takeaway? Well, I hope the second Angry Birds movie improves on what this one didn't do right. None of this fiddle-faddle on "why are the birds angry?", just go all out and have lots of fun with the already silly premise. Basically have the sequel match the energy and fun of the third act battle. Though I wonder, by the time it hits theaters (2019? 2020?), will it repeat the success? Or will it perform similarly to some of the sequels that hit this year?
What are your thoughts?